More and more places are requiring a college degree. Gone are the days of the backpacker teacher where you could waltz into a language school and get a job. Places are requiring degrees, transcripts, criminal background checks, and more paperwork than before.

Having a degree will open up more doors for you as well. In addition, you're more likely to get a good paying job with great benefits. However, time and money are an issue, especially if you're older and / or have a family. The information below will help you finish your degree as quickly and cheaply as possible. The universities below are accredited and cater to mature students. Most of them are U.S. universities, but there are also ones from the U.K., Canada, and for people living in Asia and Europe.

Subject specific exams. Criminal Justice/Police Proficiency Examinations, and Medical Terminology Examination are some examples. Wilbur Wright College is one college that accepts these.

Applicable certifications. Military credits, Foreign
credentials, Certified Child Development Credentials, Emergency Medical
Services (paramedic certification), and Licensed/Practical Nursing
certifications are just a few that may be accepted.

Life experience. Some schools will give you college
credit if you have documented work or volunteer. You may have to create a
portfolio to document your experience.

If money's an issue you could go through a community college for two years, then transfer. Try Clovis Community College, New Mexico. In the USA, regional accrediation usually is better than national, though not always. Here are some that you might want to look at.

Famous People Without a Degree
There
are plenty of people who have been able to become successful despite
the fact that they don't have a degree. Keep in mind that there are also
plenty of underemployed, jobless, unsuccessful people who don't have a
degree as well.

Alexander Graham Bell

Barbra Streisand

Ben Franklin

Bob Dylan

Bill Gates

Dave Thomas

David Ben Gurion

David Sarnoff (NBC mogul)

Debbie Fields

Dustin Hoffman

Eleanor Roosevelt

Ellen DeGeneres

Ernest Hemingway

Frank Lloyd Wright

Helena Rubenstein

Henry Ford

Jane Fonda

Jesse Ventura

John D. Rockefeller

Larry Ellison (Oracle's founder)

Leonardo DiCaprio

Madonna

Malcolm X

Mark Zuckerberg

Michael Dell

Peter Jennings

Ray Kroc (McDonald's founder)

Richard Leakey

Robert Redford

Rosie O'Donnell

Rush Limbaugh

Steve Jobs

Thomas Edison

Thomas Watson (IMB founder)

Tom Hanks

Walt Disney

Walter Cronkite

Warren Beatty

Woody Allen

Wright Brothers

Writing a Cover Letter for a Job that Requires a BA
I found this in Cool Careers For Dummies. While in some cases you won't get hired without a degree, for example,
it's an immigration requirement, in other cases your experience might
outweight the fact that you don't have a degree. You have everything to
gain and nothing to lose.

Dear Ms. Hirer,

When
you’re inundated with applications, it’s tempting to weed out those
without a degree, but I believe I’m worth a look precisely because I
don’t have a degree.

I considered getting a BA, but
after talking with a number of BA holders and examining the courses I
would have to take and their relevance to becoming a good software
marketing manager, I concluded that four years could be more profitably
spent.

I contacted directors of marketing at leading
Silicon Valley software companies and offered to work for them for free
in exchange for their mentoring. I figured that was cheap tuition for
the on-target learning I would receive. A marketing manager at HP took
me on. After three months, I felt I had learned about as much from him
as I could, whereupon I made a similar arrangement with a director of
marketing at Cisco Systems.

In these apprenticeships, I
was deeply involved in a number of projects similar to those mentioned
in your ad, specifically internet marketing and managing a national
consumer branding campaign. In addition, I attend American Marketing
Association conferences, read the best articles and books recommended by
the AMA, and spend much of my commute time listening to relevant books
on DC. To get the bigger picture, I even read a couple of books by
leading academics.

But now comes the moment of truth.
In choosing a self-directed education over a traditional one, I believe I
prioritized substance over form. Now the question is: Will you
interview me?

I hope that you’ll appreciate my having
developed an outside-the-box learning plan, that I was assertive enough
to make it happen, and persistent enough to see it through to
completeion without a professor and deadlines forcing me to do so.
Perhaps more important, in working at the right handof top software
marketing executive, I learned a tremendous amount about how to do the
job well.

I recently discussed my self-education with a
BA holder from Stanford and he said that I probably learned more of
real-value than he did.

I’m hoping you will call me for
an interview, but as with any good employee, I won’t just wait
passively. If I haven’t heard from you in a week, I will take the
liberty of phoning to follow up.
I’m enclosing samples of the deliverables I produced during my work at
HP and cisco. Thankyou for your consideration.